On December 31 the online meeting of representatives of the Secretariat of the Commissioner for Protection of State Language with the leadership of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine and the State Agency for Tourism Development was held.

The main topic of the meeting was familiarizingthe representatives of hotel and restaurant business with implementation of the norm of the law "On Ensuring the Functioning of Ukrainian as the State language"as to bringing service to customers in the Ukrainian language.

The representative of the Commissioner Andrii Vitrenko and the head of the legal department of the Secretariat Serhii Ryabenko emphasized the importance of knowingthat since January 16, 2021 all service providers,irrespective of the form of ownership, are obliged to bring service to consumers and provide information about goods and services in the state language. An exception to the above is whenupon client’s request his personal service may be providedin other language acceptable to the parties.

In order to dispel worries of representatives of hotel and restaurant industry concerning the so-called sanction component of the language law, when administrative fines for disregard for the law are to be imposed, the participants of the meeting were additionally informed about the launch of an information campaign of the Secretariat of the Commissioner in the mediawhich is aimed at familiarizingthe widest possible range of service providers and consumers with the details of implementation of the norm of the law when services in the country will be provided in Ukrainian since January 16, 2021.